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1 – 10 of 157
Article
Publication date: 22 December 2023

Alvin Patrick Valentin, Aivanne Miguel Dela Vega, Marc Ivenson Kho, Sean Russel Licayan, Elijah Liam Nierras and Jose Carlos Pabalate

This study aims to determine and analyze the predictors of food waste reduction intention and behavior among higher education institutions (HEIs) using an extended version of the…

Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to determine and analyze the predictors of food waste reduction intention and behavior among higher education institutions (HEIs) using an extended version of the theory of planned behavior (TPB).

Design/methodology/approach

This study empirically tested an extended TPB model through regression analyses using data obtained through an online survey.

Findings

Attitude toward food waste reduction, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control and food waste knowledge predicted intention to reduce food waste. Furthermore, the intention to reduce food waste predicted food waste reduction behavior.

Research limitations/implications

The results imply that extending the TPB by adding food waste knowledge significantly predicted food waste reduction intention and behavior.

Practical implications

The study identified factors that predict food waste reduction behavior and suggested ways to influence Filipino students in HEIs to reduce food waste.

Originality/value

The findings support the inclusion of food waste knowledge to the TPB in predicting food waste reduction intention and behavior among students in HEIs.

Details

International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, vol. 25 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1467-6370

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 25 May 2023

Miguel Vega and Joao Vieira da Cunha

The purpose of this study is to examine the management perceptions towards calculative practices behind the reconstruction of a mandatory hospital accreditation (HA) system that…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to examine the management perceptions towards calculative practices behind the reconstruction of a mandatory hospital accreditation (HA) system that transforms multiple facets of health-care quality into a single performance index.

Design/methodology/approach

This study contributes to the sociology of quantification mobilising the concept of commensuration as a social process to reflect on contemporary changes in managing HA systems. Data are collected adopting a case study of a Spanish public hospital drawing on semi-structured interviews, observation and documentary review.

Findings

Findings emphasise a shift from standards’ compliance to a more comprehensive view encouraging continuous quality improvement. Accreditation acts as a tin opener to facilitate external inspection removing contextual differences amongst hospitals and reducing organisational practices into controllable objects. It also reveals underlying ethical concerns as the system was built as a care quality measure that promptly developed into an attainment goal.

Practical implications

The valuable role of HA to enhance quality standards and the limitations resulting from its commensuration practices will be of interest to policymakers, organisational managers and researchers.

Originality/value

Despite a growing emphasis on audit and valuation practices in health care, accounting studies examining the capacity of public hospitals to manage quality improvement are scarce. This study inspires further research on accreditation to overcome commensuration flaws regarding external transparency, evaluation ambiguity and extra incentives.

Details

Journal of Accounting & Organizational Change, vol. 19 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1832-5912

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 27 December 2021

Geraldine Robbins, Breda Sweeney and Miguel Vega

This study examines how an externally imposed management control system (MCS) – hospital accreditation – influences the salience of organisational tensions and consequently…

1978

Abstract

Purpose

This study examines how an externally imposed management control system (MCS) – hospital accreditation – influences the salience of organisational tensions and consequently attitudes of management towards the system.

Design/methodology/approach

Data are collected using a case study of a large public hospital in Spain. In-depth interviews were conducted with 27 senior and middle managers across different functions. Relying on the organisational dualities classification in the literature, tensions are unpacked and analysed.

Findings

Evidence is presented of how hospital accreditation increases the salience of organisational tensions arising from exposition of the organisational dualities of learning, performing, organising and belonging. Salient tensions were evident in the ambivalent attitudes of management towards the hospital accreditation system.

Practical implications

The role of mandatory external control systems in exposing ambivalence and tensions will be of interest to organisational managers.

Originality/value

The study extends the management control literature by identifying an active role for an external MCS (accreditation) in increasing the salience of organisational tensions and triggering ambivalence. Contrary to the prior literature, the embedding of both poles of an organisational duality into the MCS is not a necessary precondition for increased tension salience. The range of attitudes towards MCSs beyond those specified in the previous literature (positive/negative/neutral) is extended to include ambivalence.

Details

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, vol. 35 no. 9
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0951-3574

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 January 1996

Margaret Y. Champion

Can we do business with strangers? A major handicap to any promotion is ignorance of the market and its members. In order to understand Latin Americans, says Albert Hirschman, we…

Abstract

Can we do business with strangers? A major handicap to any promotion is ignorance of the market and its members. In order to understand Latin Americans, says Albert Hirschman, we must first understand how Latin Americans understand each other. We see the “facts” one way, but their perception of these same facts is often very different. This is my purpose in reporting on Peru's attitude and internal discussions on international trade. Why Peru? A U S. State Department official told me that they consider Peru as a sort of bell wether in South America. Abraham Lowenthal of the Inter‐American Dialog says Peru has an international significance greater than would be expected, considering the size of its economy, and E. V. K. Fitzgerald of Cambridge says the Peruvian experience is significant in judgimg prospects in South America.

Details

International Journal of Commerce and Management, vol. 6 no. 1/2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1056-9219

Article
Publication date: 24 January 2022

Blanca Elizabeth Vega

The purpose of this paper is to understand how I – and many other students – became first-generation college students (FGCSs) by exploring the rise and retraction of TRIO…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to understand how I – and many other students – became first-generation college students (FGCSs) by exploring the rise and retraction of TRIO. Originally, TRIO was a set of three college access and retention programs created in the 1960s to address the needs of a population designated as academically and economically disadvantaged. The author uses the term “becoming” as a process of how a person is constructed socially, in this case, as a FGCS and faculty member. The author uses. social construction of targeted populations theory to explore my testimonio as a beneficiary of opportunity programs.

Design/methodology/approach

To explore how FGCS experience policy changes affecting TRIO, I use my testimonio to build on the historical literature that covers 1968–2001. I begin my testimonio by first reviewing my background as a second generation Ecuadorian American. I then review how I encountered opportunity programs and why I continued to be a participant in these programs, specifically, TRIO. I end my testimonio by countering criticism of TRIO programs using research on and lived experiences with TRIO.

Findings

During an era when TRIO budgets remain under constant attack, testimonios shed light on participants’ experiences with policy changes. Specifically, I reveal how economic budget cuts create policy changes to terms such as “academically and economically disadvantaged” and shapes perceptions and knowledge about who are FGCS.

Research limitations/implications

Research limitations include application of social construction of targeted group theory to one testimonio. Implications include more studies on how policy changes, specifically budget allocations could affect characterizations and images of targeted populations such as FGCS.

Practical implications

Understanding the role of policy changes to TRIO program funding benefits students from misperceptions by educational administrators and other stakeholders.

Originality/value

My testimonio also builds on work regarding the impacts of CARPS on FGCS like me. Most importantly, my testimonio contributes to the efforts necessary to ensure these programs continue to exist and succeed. I use my testimonio side by side with research literature on TRIO to become both the subject of inquiry and the inquirer, simultaneously a beneficiary and an informant of how these programs have influenced my persistence through the postsecondary education system and shaped my understanding of FGCS.

Article
Publication date: 7 November 2016

Almudena Mangas-Vega, Raquel Gómez-Díaz and José Antonio Cordón-García

From the point of view of the book chain, self-publishing is becoming increasingly common and it is doing so faster in the commercial world than in science. This study aims to…

Abstract

Purpose

From the point of view of the book chain, self-publishing is becoming increasingly common and it is doing so faster in the commercial world than in science. This study aims to analyse the phenomenon of self-publishing from the point of view of the research being done on it. Thus, in addition to studying the subject, it is going to be possible to analyse the viability of this methodology as an analysis technique.

Design/methodology/approach

The methodology is based on a combination of traditional bibliometric studies and analysis of social networks applied.

Findings

Self-publishing is a phenomenon that is being studied by the scientific community. But the research on this topic has a low rate of co-authorship and a low relationship between the most prolific authors and their relevance. The combination of techniques used has proven to be a very good choice for analyzing the data.

Originality/value

There are not enough works analyzing the research in self-publishing. Because of the peculiarities of the topic, a combination of various techniques will provide a better approach to its study, so, this paper contains some results using bibliometrics and others using social network analysis applied.

Details

The Electronic Library, vol. 34 no. 6
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0264-0473

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 30 September 2014

Jose M. Chaves-Gonzalez and Miguel A. Vega-Rodríguez

The purpose of this paper is to study the use of a heterogeneous and evolutionary team approach based on different sources of knowledge to address a real-world problem within the…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to study the use of a heterogeneous and evolutionary team approach based on different sources of knowledge to address a real-world problem within the telecommunication domain: the frequency assignment problem (FAP). Evolutionary algorithms have been proved as very suitable strategies when they are used to solve NP-hard optimization problems. However, these algorithms can find difficulties when they fall into local minima and the generation of high-quality solutions when tacking real-world instances of the problem is computationally very expensive. In this scenario, the use of a heterogeneous parallel team represents a very interesting approach.

Design/methodology/approach

The results have been validated by using two real-world telecommunication instances which contain real information about two GSM networks. Contrary to most of related publications, this paper is focussed on aspects which are relevant for real communication networks. Moreover, due to the stochastic nature of metaheuristics, the results are validated through a formal statistical analysis. This analysis is divided in two stages: first, a complete statistical study, and after that, a full comparative study against results previously published.

Findings

Comparative study shows that a heterogeneous evolutionary proposal obtains better results than proposals which are based on a unique source of knowledge. In fact, final results provided in the work surpass the results of other relevant studies previously published in the literature.

Originality/value

The paper provides a complete study of the contribution provided by the different metaheuristics included in the team and the impact of using different sources of evolutionary knowledge when the system is applied to solve a real-world FAP problem. The conclusions obtained in this study represent an original contribution never reached before for FAP.

Details

Engineering Computations, vol. 31 no. 7
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0264-4401

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 24 February 2012

Marisa da Silva Maximiano, Miguel A. Vega‐Rodríguez, Juan A. Gómez‐Pulido and Juan M. Sánchez‐Pérez

The purpose of this paper is to address a multiobjective FAP (frequency assignment problem) formulation. More precisely, two conflicting objectives – the interference cost and the…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to address a multiobjective FAP (frequency assignment problem) formulation. More precisely, two conflicting objectives – the interference cost and the separation cost – are considered to characterize FAP as an MO (multiobjective optimization) problem.

Design/methodology/approach

The contribution to this specific telecommunication problem in a real scenario follows a recent approach, for which the authors have already accomplished some preliminary results. In this paper, a much more complete analysis is performed, including two well‐known algorithms (such as the NSGA‐II and SPEA2), with new results, new comparisons and statistical studies. More concretely, in this paper five different algorithms are presented and compared. The popular multiobjective algorithms, NSGA‐II and SPEA2, are compared against the Differential Evolution with Pareto Tournaments (DEPT) algorithm, the Greedy Multiobjective Variable Neighborhood Search (GMO‐VNS) algorithm and its variant Greedy Multiobjective Skewed Variable Neighborhood Search (GMO‐SVNS). Furthermore, the authors also contribute with a new design of multiobjective metaheuristic named Multiobjective Artificial Bee Colony (MO‐ABC) that is included in the comparison; it represents a new metaheuristic that the authors have developed to address FAP. The results were analyzed using two complementary indicators: the hypervolume indicator and the coverage relation. Two large‐scale real‐world mobile networks were used to validate the performance comparison made among several multiobjective metaheuristics.

Findings

The final results show that the multiobjective proposal is very competitive, clearly surpassing the results obtained by the well‐known multiobjective algorithms (NSGA‐II and SPEA2).

Originality/value

The paper provides a comparison among several multiobjective metaheuristics to solve FAP as a real‐life telecommunication engineering problem. A new multiobjective metaheuristic is also presented. Preliminary results were enhanced with two well‐known multiobjective algorithms. To the authors' knowledge, they have never been investigated for FAP.

Article
Publication date: 3 April 2018

Dolores Romero López and José Luis Bueren Gómez-Acebo

Studies of Spanish literature during the late nineteenth century and the first one-third of the twentieth century are evolving from research on canonical writers to the study of…

Abstract

Purpose

Studies of Spanish literature during the late nineteenth century and the first one-third of the twentieth century are evolving from research on canonical writers to the study of “odd and forgotten” authors, themes and genres during what is now called the Other Silver Age. This paper aims to focus on the work undertaken in the field of literary translation by the women writers of this period.

Design/methodology/approach

Mnemosyne is an open-access digital library that allows data modeling for specific collections (women translators, science fiction, etc.) in support of research and teaching on Silver Age Spain. The first version of the library is stored on the server at the Universidad Complutense Library, and it is linked to the collections of the digital library HathiTrust and Biblioteca Nacional de España. Behind the scenes of Mnemosyne’s public presence online, the project is developing with the aid of the tool Clavy which is a rich internet application that is able to import, preserve and edit information from big data collections of digital objects so as to build bridges between institutional and digital repositories and create collections of enriched digital content. See:http://repositorios.fdi.ucm.es/mnemosine/queesmnemosine.php

Findings

The Collection Women Translators in Spain (1868-1936) inside Mnemosyne selects, categorizes and makes visible in digital format women translators and literary translations that belong to a forgotten repertoire to allow the historical review of the period. The digital collection of Spanish Women Translators pretends to be a field of international experimentation for the creation of interoperable semantic networks through which a large group of scholars could generate innovative research and theoretical reading models for literary texts. See:http://repositorios.fdi.ucm.es/mnemosine/colecciones.php

Research limitations/implications

Clavy also provides a basic system of data visualization, edition and navigation. There are plans to integrate @Note, a collaborative annotation application, into Clavy. These two computational tools were developed by the software languages research group ILSA[1] at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid.

Practical implications

Its been followed NEWW Women Writers’ categories concerning biographical categories as successful standard for ensuring interoperability in the near future: children, marital status, social class, religion, profession and other activities, financial aspects, memberships. See:http://repositorios.fdi.ucm.es/mnemosine/ver_documento.php?documento=208369

Social implications

These women also showed their interest in the writings of contemporary women by translating their works into Spanish or glossing foreign ideas about how the modern woman should be, think or behave. This digital collection shows the first steps of the intellectual women in the South of Europe.

Originality/value

To incorporate specially tailored metadata for the women translators’ collection into Mnemosyne, it will be necessary to use of Clavy’s extensibility to account for the particularities of the women translators’ collection. This is where prior knowledge of this literature’s historical and cultural context proves indispensable. In particular, the specific metadata model for the women translators’ collection incorporates elements that reflect the literary, historical and cultural characteristics of the collections.

Details

The Electronic Library, vol. 36 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0264-0473

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 January 1993

Small literary presses have come into their own. Many have been in business for a number of years. One indication of their success is that their titles are now considered for…

Abstract

Small literary presses have come into their own. Many have been in business for a number of years. One indication of their success is that their titles are now considered for major awards. This year's nominees for the National Book Award included Hayden Carruth's Collected Shorter Poems, 1946–1991 published by Copper Canyon Press and Louise Gluck's The Wild Iris published by The Ecco Press.

Details

Collection Building, vol. 12 no. 1/2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0160-4953

1 – 10 of 157